An Anopheles stephensi mosquito, which can carry P. falciparum WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION
Researchers have found a key to malaria drug resistance in the genome of Plasmodium falciparum, the disease’s causal parasite. In a related study, scientists have determined that resistance to artemisinin, the go-to drug for treating malaria infections around the world, is spreading to Thailand and Myanmar from Cambodia, where resistance was first detected in 2005.
On the genomic front, geneticist Ian Cheeseman at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio and colleagues found two spots on P. falciparum's chromosome 13 that were strongly associated with drug resistance. Cheeseman and his team suggest, in a Science paper published last week, that the region accounts for at least one-third of the heritable variation in the artemisinin resistance seen in Southeast Asia. Though the discovery may aid ...
